This is a story about home . . .

At a time when much of America is yearning to recapture the spirit and feelings of a more innocent era, comes this exceptional new book from one of our most beloved actresses: a story of one woman's journey to reconnect with the landscape of her childhood.

Though best known today as the star of the television series Once & Again and Sisters, Sela Ward considers herself first and foremost a small-town girl. The eldest of four children, she was raised by a father who helped her believe in herself, and by a mother who taught her a sense of the importance of virtues like self-respect, grace, and sacrifice. In her hometown of Meridian, Mississippi, within a tightly-knit community of neighbors and kin, Sela learned ways that would remain with her throughout life -- humble virtues that were "forged in the hearth of a loving home."

After graduating from the University of Alabama, Sela left the South in search of the excitement of cities like New York and Los Angeles, and the creative rewards of an acting career. But as she started her own family, she found herself pining for the comforts of her small-town childhood -- and searching for a way to balance her children's West Coast upbringing with a taste of a more natural way of life. She and her husband built a second home on a farm there, where she and her family could retreat several times each year, and became involved in several projects designed to restore the vitality of the hometown she remembered so fondly. Even as Sela was reconnecting with the rhythms of home, though, her world was rocked by a crisis the family had long anticipated but never quite prepared for -- the death of her mother. As her family gathered around her mama's bedside, Sela's simple journey home became something far deeper: a turning point in her own life, as she pondered her mother's complicated legacy, and came to terms with just what it was she herself was searching for.

Filled with warmth, storytelling, and laughter, Homesick is a book to treasure: an exploration of the lessons we carry away with us from childhood, and a celebration of the bittersweet legacy of home.

Sela shares the story of her family stating, "The Wards have always walked a fine line between conviction and orneriness..." She admires her father and her mother. She talks much of the way she grew up as a southern girl, the south's traditions and the legacies, girl talk sessions, cliques, church, the family restaurant, charm school and even hanging at the local Quik Stop. It's rather refreshing that the book focuses on the positives of life.

Sela speaks of her own life, though not with Hollywood spectacles on. She shares her climb to success but does not allow it to take over the entire telling of her story. Her claim to fame is only part of her. Her family, her history, her place of birth are so much more.

Homesick also touches on issues such as racism in the South, the tragedy of September 11, overindulged children and drugs. The book also details Sela's mother's death and the hardship on the family.

The book is generously sprinkled with photographs which tell a story themselves. You'll see the young Sela, the model, the actress, but mostly you'll see the real Sela Ward, the one who stood at her mother's knee and listened to the stories of her family.


A Lady With Inbred Southern Charm   August 20, 2003
K. Hemmer (Syracuse, NY United States)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful

The memoir of a beautiful woman who went to NY City and then
Hollywood but longed to go home again.
A person can never really go home again, as another Southerner,
Thomas Wolfe wrote, but Sela Ward tried very hard to duplicate
her upbringing,when she married and had two chidren.
This is a book of a woman who developed in Meridian,Miss-
issippi;during the 1960's and 1970's.Her family isn't perfect
but they are good people.
A younger Sela neede more in her life to express her ambitions so she moved away.What she also found was she also needed
stability and family.
Unable to have a realistic family life in Hollywood-she
and her husband Howard Sherman set about building a new family home back in Meridan, Mississippi.Here they are surrounded by Sela's close relatives and their children are
able to lead a more rustic life.As often as possible they
reside in comfort and live here.
This is unlike any Hollywood story.People respect each
other and help one another.
It is refreshing to read about a Hollywood star, who is just like other ordinary folks.Her lovely Southern charm comes
through in the telling of her Family's customs.


In my own thoughts I felt...   August 4, 2003
Valerie Schenk (cherry hill, new jersey United States)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful

This book is truely amazing. I cannot express all of my feelings towards it. To flip through the pages of Homesick and read of all of Sela's discoveries, embarkments, and life alterments was none other than exciting. I had known "of" Sela from "Once and Again" and from some of her movies but this book showed me more. It is probably hard to really describe one's life in a book, including describing one's own life, but Sela tackled the task and completed it. It's a book that no one, who is a fan of Sela, could skip reading, let alone put down for a second, while reading. I never stopped. True essence at heart.